WAR JOBS FOR WOMEN 


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WAR JOBS FOR WOMEN 


Magazine Section 
Office of War Information 
Social Security Building 
Wash ington, D. C. 


Serving Uncle Sam .. Page 5 

In the War Industries . Page 17 

In Business and the Professions ....... Page 33 

As Volunteers .... Page 41 


Sources Tapped: War Department, Navy Department, War Man¬ 
power Commission, Civil Service Commission, Women's Bureau 
of the Department of Labor, Department of Agriculture, In¬ 
stitute of Women's Professional Relations, 0. S. Office of 
Education, Office of Civilian Defense, American Red Cross, 
the Government's Subcommittee on Nursing, The American As¬ 
sociation of University Women, The American Council on Ed¬ 
ucation, and the Career Department of Mademoiselle Magazine. 


Sources Untapped: All having succinct summarizing material 
on the subjects discussed here, or on other phases of this 
changing war picture, are invited to send them to the OWI 
Magazine Section for a possible future revision of this 
memorandum. 


November 19 42 


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WAR JOBS FOR WOMEN 


Every American woman wants to help win the war. The 
problem is how and where to fit into that big word which is 
daily growing bigger — WOMANPOWER. 

Many women already are on the jobs they can do best 
and are putting in full time- Some yomen still have odd 
hours in which they could give volunteer patriotic service. 
Great numbers of women who have hitherto been in the home 
are taking full time jobs to free men for combat duty as 
this country f s warfare becomes more intensive. Greater 
numbers need to plan now for such service. 

The War Manpower Commission estimates that 4i million 
women will be engaged in direct war work by the end of 1942, 
and 5 million by the end of 1943. 

But this by no means indicates that only \\ million 
women must be added to the labor force. Because of the fact 
that nearly all able-bodied men over 44 are already in the 
labor force or in the armed forces, the bulk of the increase 
of million in the estimated civilian labor force and the 
armed forces during the fiscal year of June 1942 to June 
1943 will have to be women. June is a peak month in labor 
requirements. In June 1942, there were 15 million women in 
the labor force. By June 1943, this number will have to be 
approximately 20 million. 

This country, however, has not yet reached the situa¬ 
tion where women everywhere are needed for all sorts of work 
previously done by men, as in England. Employment of women 
is still a local question which must be dealt with according 
to the need and the supply of womanpower in the community.' 
There is no rule of thumb for the country as a whole. In 
crowded war industry-areas, the aim obviously must be to 
drain every bit of local labor-supply before calling in new 
labor which would create further overcrowding. 

Since America continues to be a land of initiative, the 
final catalogue of the jobs that women do in this war will 
be what women make it. Furthermore the place of women in 
the war industry picture changes so fast that there is no 
keeping absolutely up to date. This memorandum, therefore, 
is not even an attempt at an exhaustive catalogue of women’s 
war jobs, but is rather a guide to indicate some of the 
avenues opening to women, some of the typical jobs in them, 
and some of the sources of further information. 


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To Find Out About War Jobs 

In general, the following instructions are given for 
women seeking war jobs: 

If you wish to volunteer for unpaid patriotic work, go 
to your Civilian Defense Volunteer Office. 

For opportunities to work for pay in war industries, 
consult your nearest U. S. Employment Service Office. 

For work in government, follow Civil Service announce¬ 
ments through your local post office. 

If you wish to try for service with the Women's 
Auxiliary Army Corps (WAACS) apply at your nearest Army 
recruiting station. 

If you have the type of technical training required by 
Women 1 s Reserve of the Navy (WAVES) submit a written request 
for a preliminary application blank to the Director of Naval 
Officer Procurement of your Naval District. 

If you are a trained nurse wishing active duty with the 
armed forces, consult your local Red Cross Chapter or apply 
to the headquarters of any of the nine service commands of 
the Army. Or write for application forms to the National 
Headquarters, American Red Cross, Washington, D. C., or to 
the Office of the Surgeon General of the Army, 1818 H Street, 
N.W., Washington, D. C. The Red Cross is official recruit¬ 
ing agency for both Army and Navy nurses, and also recruits 
medical technicians for the Army. 

If you are a retired nurse, badly needed for work on 
the home front, consult you*' local hospitals. 

Listen to the radio. Read the newspapers and magazines. 


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SERVING UNCLE SAM 


Government war jobs have swelled the population of the 
national capital to boom-city proportions, and have added 
materially to the working forces of many other cities. In 
a single year, 40,000 stenographers and typists—largest 
block of workers employed—were added to the government pay 
roll. The Civil Service continues its call for stenogra¬ 
phers and typists, traditionally women’s jobs\ and asks all 
Federal departments to increase employment of women so that 
men may go into active service. Both War and Treasury De¬ 
partments have announced such an employment policy. Sixty 
percent of the persons now being employed in the Federal 
government are women. It is estimated that hirings in the 
metropolitan area of Washington, D. C., alone will continue 
at the rate of 1250 a week of which 750 will be women. 

The increasing need for men in combat service has also 
prompted the setting up of three women’s auxiliaries to the 
armed services, the WAACS—Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps; the 
WAVES—Women's Reserve of the Navy; and the WAF$--Women’s 
Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron. Each of these three special 
services has its own system of recruitment. Civilian posts 
in War and Navy Departments are recruited, like the rest of 
the government war jobs, through Civil Service, often 
supplemented by personal application. 

The trend for more women in civil posts and in auxil¬ 
iary posts with the armed services as a war-time measure 
must necessarily continue. The need for great numbers of 
women for stenographic, clerical, and typist positions in 
Federal war agencies in Washington presumably will continue 
as lonq as the war lasts. 

Women who derive their greatest satisfaction from the 
feeling that they are actually working with the fighting 
forces may tally up their own qualifications against the 
requirements listed by the WAACS, WAVES, and WAFS, and 
may follow the formulation of other projected auxiliaries 
such as the one now in process for the Coast Guard. As yet, 
however, these opportunities should be regarded as strictly 
limited in number by the legislation or financial budgets 
on which they were recently set up. 

WAACS : By the early part of 1943, 25,000 women 

officers and auxiliaries will be serving with the U. S, Army, 
freeing fighters from such jobs as operating switch- 


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boards, typing and clerical work, and operating office 
machines. W A ACS with specialized training will also serve 
in air craft warning units, as hostess aides and librarian 
aides, as drivers of automobiles and repairers of their 
motors, as pharmacists' assistants in the post exchange, as 
dieticians and cooks. The act authorizing this new women’s 
auxiliary army will permit an ultimate enrollment of 
150,COO women. 

Qua 1 ificat ions : For auxiliaries, must be a citizen, be 
between 21 and 45 years old, between 5 and 6 feet high, 
weigh a minimum of 100 pounds, pass intelligence tests, pass 
physical tests. Marriage is no bar. 

There is no longer opportunity to be appointed direct 
from civilian life to the Officers Candidate School of the 
WAACS. All future appointments to the Officers Candidate 
School will be from the ranks after completion of basic 
training. For the first WAAC officers candidates, some women 
over 45 years of age were accepted. This will not apply in 
the future, since promotion will be from the ranks and the 
age limit is 45 years. 

Special Opportunities : WAAC units may go wherever the 
Army goes and so some probably will have foreign service. 
General Dwight Eisenhower, Commanding General, European 
Theater, has asked for communication and clerical platoons 
to be attached to large headquarters of the American Expedi¬ 
tionary Forces under his command. 

Fay : For auxiliaries, started at $21 a month the first 
four months then $30. Women may enroll as specialists D The 
rate of pay has been: Specialist first class, $36 a month 

the first four months, $45 thereafter; specialist second 
class, $4! a month the first four months, $40 thereafter; 
specialist third class, $26 a month the first four months, 

$35 thereafter An Officer Candidate gets $50 a month; a 
Junior Leader $54; a First Leader $72„ And subsistence 
food, clothes, living quarters, dental and medical care — 
for both officers and auxiliaries 0 Legislation to raise the 
Day of the auxiliaries to that of the soldier — $50 a 
month base — became a law Oct. 27. 

WAACS must enroll, in person, at recruiting stations 
where WAAC officers are assigned. This country has 52 main 
recruiting stations, 246 substations 0 WAAC officers are now 
stationed at 5§ of these stations 0 Ask at any postoffice or 
Army headquarters about which of the WAAC-manned stations is 
nearest you. 

■tfiis act wa.9 signed 0ct o £ 7 . 

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W_AVEv>: This branch of the U. S. Naval Reserve started 
with an initial plan for 1000 officers, 10,000 enlisted 
women. The try-out was so satisfactory that the Navy now 
says it will take on as many as are needed. The purpose of 
the WAVES is to free men to go to sea, and their job quali¬ 
fications are accordingly the same as those of the officers 
they are called upon to replace. 

The technical nature of many of the Navy positions to 
be filled is indicated by the type of education and expe¬ 
rience listed as desirable. Especially wanted are women 
good in such subjects as accounting, aeronautical engineer¬ 
ing, astronomy, business statistics, civil and electrical, 
mechanical and radio eng ineering, electronics, mathematics, 
metallurgy, modern languages, physics. Other working know¬ 
ledge which might help includes architecture, business ad¬ 
ministration, chemical engineering, chemistry, commerce, 
economics, English, finance, geography, geology, political 
science, history, industrial engineering, journalism, 
library science, mineralogy, psychology, and transportation. 
Experience listed as desirable includes supervisory jobs in 
telegraph and cable offices, and maintenance work on teletype 
machines. Also asked for are licensed rad»c operators, 
ultra-high frequency engineers, lexicographers, typewriting 
teachers, statisticians, business machine demonstrators, 
junior executives, and personnel supervisors. The first 
training schools opened were in radio, storekeeping, and 
Navy clerical work. 

Qua 1 if icat ions : Officers must be graduates of an ac¬ 
credited university or college, or must have had two years 
of administrative or technical experience in business or 
professional fields in addition to two years 7 college. Age 
must be oetwaen 21 and 50. Must be a citizen, pass physical 
and aptitude tests. Must have no children under |8 years of 
age. May be married but not to a man in the armed forces. 
This is to prevent husband and wife being under conflicting 
military orders. |f unmarried at time of appointment, 
officer must agree not to marry until after completion of 
training course. Midshipmen must meet same requirements, 
except that they must be not less than 20 years old and 
under 3C, must have no children, and if unmarried at time 
of enlistment must agree not to marry prior to completion 
of Reserve Midshipmen training. 

Special Advantages : The technical training which the 
Navy gives is likely to prove a great employment asset after 
the term of service is over. 


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Pay: Regular Navy salary scale for the position occu¬ 
pied. Midshipmen, $65 a month, food and lodging. Ensign, 
$1800 annual pay, $46 rent, $21 subsistence monthly. Lieu¬ 
tenant Junior Grade, $2000 annual base pay; without de¬ 
pendents, $60 a month for rent, $21 for subsistence; with 
dependents, $75 a month rent, $42 subsistence. Lieutenant 
Senior Grade, $2400 annual base pay; without dependents, 

$75 for rent, $21 for subsistence; with dependents, $90 for 
rent, $21 for subsistence. A cash allowance is made for 
uniforms at the time of entering the service. No further 
clothing allowance is made. 

Apply in writing, stating age, educational background 
and experience, to the Director of Naval Officer Procurement 
in your Naval District. Officers are located in Boston, New 
York, Philadelphia, Washington, D, C., Richmond, Charleston, 
Miami, New Orleans, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and 
Seattle. 

WAFS : This experimental auxi1iary aviation unit, re¬ 
cruited on a Civil Service requirements basis and not created 
by Act of Congress as were the WAACS and the WAVES, is 
starting with about 40 active women pilots and 10 women en¬ 
gaged .in administrative duties. Something of the large num¬ 
bers of women pilots from which such an air auxiliary might 
eventually draw is shown by the fact that 3500 women pilots 
have been accepted in the Civil Air Patrol organized a week 
before Pearl Harbor to work for Army and Navy. These CAP 
women pilots are presumably on their way to higher qualifica¬ 
tions. A woman pilot must be thoroughly qualified to be able 
to join the WAFS. 

Qua 1ifications : Must be a U. S. citizen between 21 and 
35 years of age, have a high school education, possess a com¬ 
mercial pilot's license with 200-horsepower rating, have not 
less than 500 hours of logged and certified flying time, and 
have had cross-country flying experience. 

Pay: $3000 annually, quarters provided. 

Apply in writing to the Air Transport Command, War 
Department, Washington, D. C. 

Army and Navy Nurses : All qualified nurses who can 
possibly do so should feel it their patriotic duty to serve 
with our armed forces in this critical time in the world's 
history. The Army must recruit 2500 nurses a month, the 
Navy 500. That means that at least 36,000 graduate nurses 


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a year must leave civilian posts to care for soldiers and 
sailors. Nursing is woman’s primary and traditional joD in 
war time. Although she is not subject to draft, it is as 
much the duty of a qualified nurse to serve her country as 
it is for a nan of similarly valuable training to enter the 
armed services. 


Qua 1 ificaticns ; Must oe a graduate, registered nurse 
with at least three years’ training in an accredited nursing 
school; must be between 21 and 40 years of age; must pass 
physical tests. Navy nurses must be unmarried. A rule went 
into effect on October } that nurses in the Army who marry 
will be continued in active service for the duration of the 
war and six months thereafter at the discretion of the 
Surgeon General. A married nurse, however, may not join the 
Army Nurse Corps. 

Special Advantages : All nurses go in as officers—Second 
Lieutenant in the Army, Ensign in the Navy. If a nurse has 
aptitude in a special field, such as surgery or anesthetics, 
she is likely to be put into that field. Nurses with ex¬ 
perience as hostesses for the commercial ai r lines are 
wanted for air amDulance duty. If an Army nu r se has super¬ 
visory experience, she is likely to be advanced to First 
Lieutenant, and some even become Captains. Only two Army 
nurses are commissioned officers, the commander of the Corps 
is a Colonel, her assistant a Lieutenant Colonel. The super¬ 
intendent of the Navy Nurse Co^ps is a Lieutenant Commander 
and her assistant is a Lieutenant. Army nurses actually 
share the fortunes of war with the U. S. troops wherever 
they go, and there is a good chance for foreign service for 
those who volunteer for such posts. For Doth Army and Navy 
nurses, opportunity for a continued interesting career is 
likely to open in the reconstruction work which must follow 
the war in all parts of the world. 

Pay: Base pay is $90 a month. Promotions in rank in 
accordance with Army and Navy regulations. Nurses also get 
quarters, uniforms, subsistence. If a bill now in Congress 
is passed, an Army nurse will receive the same pay as an 
Army officer of the samej rank--if she is a First Lieutenant, 
she will get the same pay as a Fi^st Lieutenant in the Army. 

Enroll with your local Red Cross Chapter or write for 
an application blank to the National Headquarters of the 
American Red Cross in Washington; or apply to your nearest 
Army Service Command headquarters or write to the Surgeon 
General o f the Army, Washington, D. C. The Red Cross is 
authorized by Congress to recruit both Army and Navy nurses, 

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check their aualifications, make the necessary initial in¬ 
quiries. When a summons comes from War or Navy Departments, 
only a final physical check-up is necessary before going 
into active service. 

Medical Technologists : The Medical Department of the 
Army employs civilians as technologists as their services 
are required. The American Red Cross, through its Medical 
and Health Service, is enrolling women technologists between 
the ages of 21 and 53. The names and qualifications of all 
enrol lees are submitted to the office of the Surgeon General 
of the Army. At present there is a great need for more 
dietitians and physical therapy technicians for service 
within and outside the continental United States. Write to 
the Director of Enrollment of Medical Technologists, Ameri¬ 
can Red Cross, National Headquarters, Washington, D. C. 

Civilian Posts in War and Navy Departments ; The bulk 
of civilian hirings by the U. S. since 1940 has been for 
the Army and Navy, largely for jobs outside Washington. 

This fact is worthy of consideration by women seeking em¬ 
ployment, as indicative of where the majority of the jobs 
are likely to be found. As of June 30, 1942, the date of 
latest available figures, approximately 275,000 women were 
working for the War Department, 40,000 of them in Washing¬ 
ton, the rest outside. A little over 56,000 were working 
for the Navy, 14,000 in Washington, the rest outside. These 
combined totals were well over half the total number of 
women working in the entire executive Civil Service--about 
550,000. Some of these civilian posts are colorfully "with 
the armed services." For instance, estimate has been made 
that at least 25,000 women eventually would be employed in 
the field of radio alone. Others follow more traditional 
Civil Service patterns for women workers. 

Army Examples : Spectacular are the women’s jobs per¬ 
formed on the Aberdeen, Md. Proving Grounds where former 
stenographers, salesgirls and housewives test out anti-air¬ 
craft and machine guns, drive tanks, run |5-ton cranes. 

The Army Air Force has been using 50 experienced women 
fliers to train cadets at primary flight schools. Further 
use of women fliers will result from the school to be headed 
by Miss Jacaueline Cochran who was recently named Director 
of Women’s Flying Training within the Army Air Forces. While 
many of her graduates will doubtless join the WAFS, they 
will also be used for various other aviation jobs. 

The Army expects to have 25,000 women by the end of 
1942 in aviation field work inspecting planes, cleaning and 


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inspecting parachutes, cleaning engines, and towing planes. 

The Signal Corps was so interested in getting good technicians 
among upperclass students and graduates of women*s colleges 
that it sponsored a tour of the country last spring, adding 
25 young women to the Dersonnel of the Signal Corps Develop¬ 
ment Station at Fort Monmouth, Hew Jersey. The Army never 
has been able to fill all its openings for women draftsmen . 
Women work in War Department plants producing guns, tanks, 
parachutes, bombs, and clothing, and in arsenals and depots 
as chemical workers, precision metal workers and distribu¬ 
tion clerks. 

The Army must depend largely on good inspection to 
maintain high efficiency. It is depending more and more on 
women for good inspection. Its inspection jobs are most 
exacting and difficult, and women have been doing them well. 
To widen the field for women in this capacity, the Quarter¬ 
master Depot at Philadelphia has set up training courses for 
special technical inspections. Women inspect clothing and 
fabrics, guns, ammunition and other ordnance material. 

Navy Examples : To a lesser degree and with fewer work¬ 
ers, the Navy has departed sharply from tradition. Notable 
was the admission of women workers in other than clerical 
positions to both Washington, D. C., and Brooklyn, N. Y., 

Navy Yards. As of July 1942, women in the Washington Navy 
Yard working on semi-skilled ordnance jobs numbered 1,023 
as against 2,686 women clerical workers there. Employment 
of the large number of women in overalls was made possible 
by breaking down technical and precision operations. Where 
men in years gone by have spent four years in general ap¬ 
prenticeship, women now learn not a trade but one operation. 
The Navy also employs women physicists, engineers, archi¬ 
tects, designers, mathematical computers, laboratory workers, 
flight statisticians, photographic interpreters, and 
inspectors. 

Qualifications and Pay : There are no specific educa¬ 
tional requirements for clerical, stenographic and office 
machine jobs, and for unskilled jobs in the war plants. 

These jobs range usually from $1260 up to $2000. Women with 
administrative, technical and scientific training can qualify 
for positions paying from $2600 on up to $5600. A very few 
posts under Civil Service pay as high as $8000. 

How to Get Civilian Jobs with Army and Navy : Recruit¬ 
ment is by the Civil Service Commission. Go to your nearest 
first or second class post office and consuR the Civil 

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Service Secretary there. See "How Civil Service Works" at 
tne end of this section. 


Training programs : While it is the purpose of the Civil 
Service Commission to furnish the Federal War Agencies with 
fully qualified personnel, this is now often impossible. It 
supplies tne best personnel obtainable. 

To meet the need for trained workers, training courses 
are given. Congress has provided funds to be allotted to 
state-owned schools through the Office of Education. With 
these funds, vocational courses are conducted in which workers 
are trained for jobs vital to the war-rroduction program. For 
example, the War Department has arranged through the Office of 
Education to have training courses set up in various places 
to train women as well as men for such varied positions as 
junior optical worker, junior instrument maker, junior lens 
grinder, apprentice machinist, apprentice tool maker, senior 
clerk, automechanic, inspector of various types of ordnance 
equipment, storekeeper, engineering aide. 

Increased attention is also being given to training-on- 
the-job for employees not adequately trained, and other train¬ 
ing is given f6r the up-grading of employees to be subse¬ 
quently assigned to more difficult work. 

Other Federal Agencies : While the word "war" is spe¬ 
cifically linked with Federal agencies created for the purpose 
of doing some specific war-time job, such as War Production 
Board, War Manpower Commission, Office of War Information, 
Office of Economic Stabilization, and Office of Price Control, 
all Federal agencies are now doing some kind of war work and 
are therefore war agencies. From now on, employment of women 
in all these Federal war agencies necessarily must be in¬ 
creasingly on a replacement basis, as men whose duties are 
not absolutely essential to the war are drawn off by the draft 
or by volunteering for the armed services. This will mean 
war-duration jobs for trained women in a great variety of 
vocations. 

Employment opportunities fail into three main categories : 

(I) Stenographic, clerical, and office machine jobs; (2) Ad¬ 

ministrative, technical, and scientific positions requiring 
specialized training and experience; (3) Highly specialized 
scientific posts formerly filled only by men, and for which 
women are now being sought. 

Stenographic, Clerical, Office Machine Jobs : These are 

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the jobs, urgently necessary to the conduct of the war, which 
have drawn thousands of girls to Washington, will draw thou¬ 
sands more. The girls in them are serving their country just 
as surely as are the boys who go to camp. Applicants must 
pass written examinations. These tests have become shorter, 
easier, as demand became more urgent. For a purely clerical 
position, not even shorthand and typing skills are necessary. 
Applicants must pass physical tests. Girls who have finished 
high school, haven’t finished college, or who have finished 
college but have no working experience often can find work in 
line with the subjects of major interest to them in school. 

Many government departments now offer in-service training, to 
help girls qualify for advancement. Those who can type 35 
words a minute can qualify as typists; those who can in addi¬ 
tion take dictation at 96 words a minute can qualify as stenog¬ 
raphers. So great has been the need for stenographers tTiat at 
one time 60 examiners were sent out over the country to recruit 
them, give them examinations in their home towns, grade the 
papers immediately, and put the girls who passed right on the 
train for Washington. 

Typical "in Washington only" positions as announced by 
the Civil Service Commission September I, 1942 and their start¬ 
ing salaries, depending on ability, were: addressograph op¬ 
erators, $1260 and $1440; alphabetic card punch operator, 

$1260; blueprint operator, $1260 and $1440; graphotyjfe op¬ 
erator, $1260; mimeograph operator, $1260; junior typist, 

$1260; junior stenographer $1440; tabulating machine operator 
$1260 and $1440; photostat operator, $1260. 

Administrative, technical, scientific positions : For 
college graduates without experience a large crop of "junior" 
posts have sprung up in the past few years. A special examina¬ 
tion for college graduates was announced by the Civil Service 
Commission in 1939, and each spring since graduates by the 
thousands have been examined in about a score of optional sub¬ 
jects, qualifying as junior chemists, junior agronomists, 
junior engineers, junior physicists, junior economists. Start¬ 
ing salary is usually $2000. 

Almost any professional or business career a woman may 
have started will find its counterpart in the varied activities 
of the Federal Government in war time. 

The career woman who wishes to take a war-time position 
in government should look at the list of open examinations at 
the local post office to find out whether there is one which 
fits her qualifications. If so, all she has to do is take 


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the examination and, presuming that she passes it, await an 
offer of appointment. If there is no examination in which 
she is interested, she should write a letter to the Civil 
Service Commission describing her qualifications. The Com¬ 
mission, being the central recruiting agency of the Federal 
Government, will inform her as to whether there is need for 
persons with her qualifications and, if so, where the need 
exists. 

In fields of special war-time need, the Civil Service 
Commission, instead of specifying the closing date for an 
examination, keeps it open continuously. One such field is 
nursing. Junior graduate nurses get one year in-service 
training in veterans 1 hospitals in the Public Health Service, 
or in the Indian Service at a starting salary of $1620 a 
year; a junior public health nurse starts at $1800; nursing 
consultants get $2600 to $5600. Architects qualified in 
design, specifications, and estimating get $2000 to $3200; 
engineering draftsmen $1440 to $2600. Chemists, $2600 to 
$5600. A junior chemist examination at $2000 was closed to 
men applicants last June, will be open to women until the 
needs of the Service have been met. Only women are taking 
the test for technical and scientific aide at $1440 to $2000. 

It is usual for positions of this type to be qualified 
for on the basis of an "unassembled" examination. Ho written 
test of set questions is required, the applicant being rated 
on the basis of sworn statements submitted in his application, 
corroborated by evidence based on investigation and interview. 
Those who make the most able and best-backed-up presentations 
of their education and experience are the most likely to get 
the position applied for. When taking an unassembled Civil 
Service examination, remember that the person who will read 
and grade it doesn't know you personally. Where real ex¬ 
perience is necessary, state it fully and clearly and offer 
proof wherever possible. If you expect to occupy a profes¬ 
sional position, make your presentation look professional, 
not amateurish. Each examination announcement states quali¬ 
fications in great detail and specifies salary. 

Highly specialized scientific posts : The National Roster 
of Scientific and Specialized Personnel, maintained by the 
War Manpower Commission, stands ready to list all highly 
trained women and to make their special qualifications known 
to any employing agency concerned with the war effort. So 
great is the shortage in chemistry and some other scientific 
fields that an effort is being made to search out the "hidden 
scientists," those who have married and retired from college 

8-0369-P14-bu- |4 



faculties or high posts in industry. Largest number of women 
Doctors of Philosophy now registered on this roster are in 
the field of psychology. 

Women university graduates are advised that there is 
urgent need for women in the following scientific fields: 
physics, metallurgy, meteorology,geology, radio, and all forms 
of engineering—electrical, chemical, mechanical, sanitary. 

A few women engineers are employed at the present time in the 
Federal Government. The field of engineering will be calling 
more and more for women to fill vacancies. Women with train¬ 
ing in architecture are wanted as draftsmen. Other fields in 
which openings are occurring are personnel work, public ad¬ 
ministration, economics and statistics. 

How the Civil Service Works : Boards of Civil Service 
Examiners are located in 5000 cities — each city having a 
first or second class post office. There are also 13 re¬ 
gional Civil Service offices, usually located in post offices 
or customhouses. Announcements of current examinations are 
posted in all these places on bulletin boards. A Civil Ser¬ 
vice Secretary there will give application forms on request 
and will assist in filling them out. 

Where positions are purely local in nature, announcement 
of the examination is made locally. This makes possible re¬ 
cruiting of local people for local jobs. Therefore, if you 
want to work near home, don f t write to Washington until you 
have first consulted your own Regional Civil Service Office. 

Thousands of positions, however, are filled as the re¬ 
sult of announcements from Washington. If you want to be 
notified when an examination in which you are interested is 
next announced, send your name to the U. S. Civil Service 
Commission, Washington, D. C., or to the Director of the 
Civil Service Region in which you live. Your request will 
be kept on file, and when the examination is next announced 
you will be sent a. copy of the announcement and the proper 
application form. Regional offices are located in Boston, 

Hew York, Philadelphia, Winston-Salem, N. C., Denver, Atlanta, 
Cincinnati, Chicago, St. Paul, St. Louis, New Orleans, Seattle 
and San Francisco. By going personally to the Civil Service 
Commission office in any of these cities, you may obtain ex¬ 
pert advice. The Civil Service Secretary in each first and 
second class post office also is informed on the workings of 
the system and ready to answer inquiries. Any question which 
is not answered satisfactorily in this fashion may be sub¬ 
mitted in writing to the U. S. Civil Service Commission in 
Washington, D. C. 


I 5 


8-0369-P15-bu- 



You will be told when and where to report for an exam¬ 
ination by the Civil Service Commission in Washington- or its 
regional office. When your examination has been passed on 
by the examiners, the Civil Service Commission will inform 
you of your rating,, if you pass, your name is placed on a 
list of eligibles, arranged in order of the ratings received,, 
The Civil Service Commission does not give jobs. Appoint¬ 
ments are made by other Federal departments and agencies from 
the Civil Service list of eligibles. 

All positions on the Federal pay roll are quite literally 
war-time jobs, the ruling being that employment is for the 
duration of the war and not to exceed six months thereafter. 


I 6 


8 -0369 P16 bu 


IN THE WAR INDUSTRIES 


In the past two years, the United States has swung into 
total war production. Vast new war industries have created 
new and crowded communities. Older industries have converted 
to the uses of war. All agriculture has been keyed to the 
Food for Freedom program. 

In the course of this gigantic movement, women by the 
tens of thousands have gone as workers into the war factories. 
This was done despite a considerable initial prejudice 
against them, shown by a survey of employers earlier in the 
change-over to war production. Women have also gone to work 
in the fields and orchards. 

To manipulate the machines that produce guns, tanks, 
ammunition, hundreds of thousands of women who have never 
been in the labor market before will soon be taking jobs. A 
prediction that 50 percent of the workers on these machines 
will be women is regarded as not overshooting the mark. 

Enormous advances in the proportions of women to be em¬ 
ployed in 1943 were foreshadowed by preliminary results of a 
questionnaire submitted to 1000 management executives by the 
magazine>Modern Industry. Exclusive of office employes, the 
sampling of the Aviation Industry showed I percent employed 
in 1941, 15 per cent being employed in 1942, expectation of 
65 per cent to be employed in 1943; in the Electrical Indus¬ 
try, the percentages ran 6 per cent in 1941, 9 per cent in 
1942, an anticipated 35 per cent in 1943; in the Instrument 
Industry, 10 per cent in 1941, 35 per cent in 1942, an antic¬ 
ipated 60 per cent in 1943; in the Pharmaceutical Industry, 

45 per cent in 1941, 55 per cent in 1942, an anticipated 75 
per cent in 1943; in the Tool and Die Industry, 2 per cent in 
1942, an anticipated 20 per cent in 1943; Machinery, none in 
1941, 10 per cent in 1942, an anticipated 50 per cent in 
1943; Hosiery, 65 per cent in 1941, 75 per cent in 1942, an 
anticipated 80 per cent in 1943. 

Other outstanding evidences of the woman-hiring trend 
were noted in the Labor Market, publication of the Federal 
Security Agency. Approximately 21,800 manufacturing, mining, 
construction, transportation, and communication and utilities 
establishments reported that of 12 million workers employed 
in July, 2 million were women. The WPA was quoted as rep.ort- 
ing that employment of women in all industries over the past 
year has risen 2-1 million as compared with an increase of 


17 


8-0369-P17-bu- 


only | m.illion men. In Detroit, 26 oer cent of the persons 
hired in a recent 60-day period were women. A large pro¬ 
ducer of radio eauipment in New York planned to employ 1300 
women out of a total staff of 1600. 

These women will come from the 4.4 million homemakers 
in urban life who are under 45 years of age and do not have 
children under 16; from the 9.i million such homemakers 
under 45 who have children under 16; and for the 9.5 million 
non-farm homemakers over 45. 

Why a Factory or Farm Job : The woman who takes a fac¬ 
tory or farm job has the great satisfaction of knowing that 
she is each day producing some physical thing which will 
help win the war. This vital fact has lured many girl grad¬ 
uates of universities and colleges into wage jobs in the war 
production plants and fields. They argue that they can work 
with their heads later on, and that while their country 
needs such service in order that freedom can go on in the 
world, they will earn a living with their hands and consider 
it a worth while part of their 1 ife experience. 

Orderly Hiring : Fitting women into war industry is a 
community-by-community job, which must be done with wise 
forethought to prevent overcrowding, bad housing conditions, 
outcroppings of juvenile delinquency and child neglect, and 
frittering away of labor resources. 

The War Manpower Commission has been set up by the Fed¬ 
eral Government to accomplish use of the entire working 
force of this nation—its men, its women, its youth even 
down to high school age Q This commission also must safe¬ 
guard children, our future manpower. It is estimated by 
this commission that something like 5,000,000 additional 
women must enter the labor force by the end of 1943. These 
are in addition to 14,000,000 already at work. Not all 
these women workers will go into direct war production. But 
since all civilian production is now being cut to essentials 
--just what is needed for all of us to carry on the war--all 
work will become in effect war work. From now on women will 
also have to "man" many essential civilian services, driving 
trucks and trolley cars, taking over many of the jobs on 
newspapers, in radio stations, in telegraph offices, banks, 
essential retail services. 

To assist in this gigantic recruiting job the War Man¬ 
power Commission has created a Women’s Advisory Committee of 
twelve members—outstanding women from all Darts of the 


6-0369-P18-bu- 


18 




country. They will advise in all matters of major policy 
as they affect women and the contributions they can make in 
the prosecution of the war. 

General Employment Policies : Several governmental 
agencies concerned with induction of women into industry 
have formulated some important general guiding policies. 
Among them are the following: 

Equal Pay : The National War Labor board established 
as a policy in three cases which came before it the princi¬ 
ple of eaual pay for equal work for women in war industry. 
This was hailed by the Federal Women's Bureau as a victory 
for women workers and for advocates of fair wage policies— 
a great advance over the situation in the last war. To pay 
women less than men for the same work undermines the whole 
pay structure, causing employers to take women on as "cheap 
labor" and precipitating male unemployment in normal times. 

Day Care: The War Manpower Commission has given an 
opinion that employment by industry of mothers of young 
children should in general be deferred until all other 
sources of labor supply have been exhausted. It is granted, 
however, that there will be exceptional cases in which 
mothers of young children will be employed — for instance, 
when the mother’s wage is necessary to support an adequate 
standard of living; when the community is so overcrowded 
that it cannot house additional workers and must make use of 
all possible women already there; and when tha mother of 
small children has had special training which will make her 
immediately and exceptionally useful. In such cases, satis¬ 
factory day care for small children must be set up by the 
communities. Such day care may consist of (l) foster family 
care, in which the child of a working mother is cared for, 
under community supervision, by a private family (2) home¬ 
maker service, in which a person is sent into the child's 
own home to carry on in place of the mother and (3) by 
grouo activities outside the home—nursery schools, day 
schools, play schools, vacation camps. A Day Care Section 
has been set up by the War Manpower Commission in the Office 
of Defense Health and Welfare Services to work out the 
entire problem of safeguarding the Children of the women who 
go into war production jobs. 

Preqnancy : The Women's Bureau and Children’s Bureau of 
the U. S. Department of Labor, in consultation with medical 
specialists and industrial women, has recommended as a gen¬ 
eral policy that provisions for maternity care and leave 


19 


y-0369-P19-bu- 






should not jeopardize a woman’s job nor her seniority priv¬ 
ileges. A minimum of 6 weeks leave before the birth of a 
child and at least two months after is considered essential 
to the welfare of mother and child. It is urged that a 
woman expecting a child give first consideration to her own 
health and to safeguarding th° health of her child. While 
some women who are pregnant or have young children may find 
it necessary to work, the labor market does not justify 
recruiting them, and they are warned against certain occu¬ 
pations which are especially hazardous during pregnancy, 
such as work requiring lifting or exposure to toxic sub¬ 
stances. 

General Working Conditions : Women whose lives have 
been in home and school must become familiar with a whole 
new working environment. Take the important subject of 
safety. One college girl said: "Safety is a foreign word 
until you feel the deadly quality in a plant." Women are 
working with high explosives. They are working with deadly 
chemicals. They are working with machinery that could maim 
or kill. In the war plants’ training courses, safety is 
constantly emphasized. To aid both employers and workers 
in attaining the best possible working conditions, the Fed¬ 
eral Women’s Bureau is issuing a series of pamphlets and 
leaflets. Those issued by the Women’s Bureau thus far are: 
Effective Industrial Uses of Women; Lifting Heavy Weights; 
Safety Clothing; Hazards to Women In War Plants; Washing 
and Toilet Facilities; Time for Meals and Rest; Night Work 
and Shift Rotation. Two other useful publications are When 
You Eat Out and Work Clothes For Women, which may be ob¬ 
tained from the Office of Information, Department of Agri¬ 
culture. 

War Industries Employing Women : The list of war indus¬ 
tries which women have already entered to a large or small 
extent includes: Aircraft and Parts; Small Arms and Artil¬ 
lery Ammunition; Agriculture and Canning; Communications; 
Chemicals (industrial); Chemical Products; Electrical Ma¬ 
chinery; Firearms, Guns, Gas Masks, Parachutes; Machinery; 
Machine Tool and Machine Shops; Radio Parts and Equipment; 
Rubber Goods (industrial); Scientific and Professional 
Instruments, Photographic Apparatus and Optical Goods; Sur¬ 
gical, Medical and Dental Instruments and Supplies; Ship 
and Boat Building and Repairing; Sighting and Fire Control 
Equipment; Tank and Auto Parts and Equipment; Transporta¬ 
tion; Utilities; Oil Refineries; Mines; Lumber and Saw 
Mills. 


8-0369-P2Q-bu- 


20 




To this shouldbe added the whole familiar and tremen¬ 
dous field of civilian goods and service, since keeping es¬ 
sential civilian life going is part of the over-all plan¬ 
ning for war industries. 

Women Have Proven Worth: Two years age, when little 
use had been made of women in the war industries, the 
Women’s Bureau of the Department of Labor drew ud a list in 
eight categories of the jobs that women could do. Now 

large numbers of women are doing all of these things. 

This list two years ago included: (I) Manipulative 
skills, such as operating machines, drill presses, milling 
machines, light punch and forming presses, bench and watch¬ 
makers lathes, burring and polishing lathes, light duty 
automatic screw machines, and light turret lathes; also 
assembly work requiring use of hand tools, sheet metal 
forming and riveting and hand finishing by filing and burr¬ 
ing; welding; soldering; electrical work; spray painting. 

(2) Inspection including visual, by gage, and by calibra¬ 
tion, and checking and testing raw materials. (3) Packing. 
(4) Factory service, such as production planning and rout¬ 
ing, drafting, timekeeping. (5) Supervising. (6) Training. 
(7) Personnel relations, such as interviewing and hiring 
women, nursing, and welfare work. (8) General office cler¬ 
ical work. 

High-pressure production for two years has proven that 
women excel in the tasks that require sharp eyes, suppleness 
of wrist, delicate touch, repetitive motion, exactness. 

Employment of large numbers of women has also been made 
possible by breaking down tasks which have heretofore re- 
auired years of training, or a man’s strength, into their 
component parts and assigning to women the operations they 
can do. < 

How to Look for a Job in War Industry : Military regu¬ 
lations forbid the publication on a nation-wide scale of 
names of war industry plants or numbers of employees. How¬ 
ever, in each locality, the most available industries and 
the approximate size of their working forces are well enough 
known to indicate labor opportunities. Where the labor sit¬ 
uation is not complex much hiring is done directly by the 
plants. However, the problems of war have brought to the 
fore the services of the United States Employment Service. 

If you are seeking a job in any of the war plants in your 
vicinity, go to your nearest office of the United States 




Employment Service and register. If you have no training, 
you will be referred to training facilities. For the great 
mass of women's jobs in war production most of the training 
courses are no more than six weeks in duration, many are even 
shorter. In many plants training is given right on the job. 
For unskilled jobs there are no educational reauirements, but 
aptitude tests are often given by the Employment Service and 
have proven most helpful in putting the right person into the 
right job. 

H ow USES Works : The United States Employment Serv¬ 
ice is an agency which for the past nine years has been serv¬ 
ing both workers and employers, fitting people to jobs 
throughout the United States. Its offices were State-oper¬ 
ated until January I, 1942. Then the many State-operated 
employment services were brought under one central control at 
Washington because of the necessity of a national, coordi¬ 
nated effort to locate, train, and place in the war indus¬ 
tries the rapidly increasing numbers of men and women re¬ 
quired for mass production. The USES functions through 1,500 
full-time offices and twice that number of part-time officeso 

The Employment Service urges every employer to give it, 
far enough in advance to enable it to find the workers he 
needs, a list of job-openings which he expects to have at any 
given time, and the requirements for each job by occupation 
and skill. It asks the employer not to advertise for workers 
and particularly not to hire workers away from other employ¬ 
ers, but to give the Employment Office a chance to send to 
him qualified people who are unemployed or employed in a non- 
essential capacity. Every other month, officers of many of 
the important war establishments sit down with representa¬ 
tives of USES to size up labor needs. 

The Employment Service keeps in closest working rela¬ 
tionship with all labor-training programs. Knowing the 
employers' needs, it can give the right recommendations on 
training applicants to fill those needs, and can refer ap¬ 
plicants to training courses most likely to result in get¬ 
ting jobs. 

To each worker the Employment Service says: "You can 
speed up the war production of your country by getting the 
job you can best do and which needs most to be done. Your 
local United States Employment Office exists for the purpose 
of fitting workers to jobs." 


, 8-0369-P22-bu- 


22 



War Training Program : Women who have had no experience 
whatever in running machines must become lathe operators, 
riveters, drillers, welders, metal workers of all types and 
descriptions. That in itself means one of the biggest train¬ 
ing programs on which this nation has ever embarked. 

So closely is the pressing need for training linked up 
with the whole question of man and woman power, that the vo¬ 
cational training functions of the Federal Government have 
been placed under the War Manpower Commission, and the U. S. 
Office of Education maintains a representative in each of the 
eleven regional offices of the War Manpower Commission. 

Women are welcomed into each of the three great training 
programs which help workers to prepare for and progress in 
war jobs. 

By far the greatest of these programs is Vocational 
Training for War Production Workers . In the past 28 months, 

3, 100,0Q0 persons have been trained for war work under this 
U. S. Office of Education program in 2500 vocational schools. 
Women did not enter these courses in any numbers until about 
9 months ago, and only 140,000 of those trained have been 
women. By and large, these were mostly women already used to 
industry who were refreshing old skills or changing over from 
peace to war operations. From now on, the numbers will in¬ 
crease rapidly, and will consist more and more of women abso¬ 
lutely new to industry. Classes are of high school level, 
and are concentrated chiefly on machine manipulations, assem¬ 
bly, and inspection work. As of August 31, enrollment of 
women in these vocational training courses was 61,826 of 
which 45,546 were being trained to take jobs and 16,380 were 
studying to advance themselves. Women constituted around 26% 
of those training to enter industry. It is estimated that 
100,000 women will be enrolled in vocational training courses 
by December 1942. 

The second of these programs, the Engineering, Science 
and Management War Training Program, offering intensive 
courses of college and postgraduate character, is conducted 
in some 175 colleges and universities by the U. S. Office of 
Education. The women taking these courses naturally will be 
few in comparison with the great numbers to be trained in the 
vocational schools. But women who are qualified for such 
specialized training should take advantage of the unusual op¬ 
portunity, created by war necessities, to obtain higher edu¬ 
cation in classes offered free by the government. These 
courses cover a great variety of subjects, often keyed to 


23 


8-0369-p23-bu- 



local needs. In California, for instance, a woman might 
train as a petroleum inspector and go to work in an oil 
refinery. In the east, she might be trained to become a 
detailed draftsman, a physicist, or a chemist. If she has 
had the education and the aptitudes necessary to qual.ify for 
some of the higher courses, she might, as one instance, 
train for and get a job in aerodynamics. An estimated 
13,000 women are currently enrolled in the ESMWT program. 

Many industries conduct In-Plant Training courses, set 
up by the industry itself with the expert advice of the War 
Manpower Commission. Admission to many of these courses is 
no more difficult than showing promise in an aptitude test. 

In a few of the skilled trades, such as printing, women also 
enter on the longer apprenticeship programs and their num¬ 
bers have been somewhat increased as a result of the war. 

Women have been admitted in large numbers to a within- 
the-government training program. In government-owned and 
government-operated arsenals, air depots, navy yards, quar¬ 
termasters depots, courses are organized for new workers and 
those seeking promotion. The U.S. Office of Education con¬ 
ducts these courses at the request of War and Navy Depart¬ 
ments. 

With the opening of high schools and colleges in Sep¬ 
tember 1942, the whole curriculums were newly organized for 
war purposes. 

The American Council on Education recently issued a 
bulletin urging college girls to take enough mathematics and 
science to provide for specialization in work needed for 
war, and to take courses not because they want them but 
because they are useful in the war effort. 

"Production cannot wait," this bulletin stated. "Under 
present conditions, women students should plan their indi¬ 
vidual programs to equip them to fill a Dosition at the end 
of any semester in case the crisis becomes so acute that the 
national interest demands their services." 

Fields in which women were advised to take specialized 
training were: Health, including physicians, dietitians, 
nurses, laboratory technicians, experts in public health, 
bacteriologists, chemists, psychiatric social workers, occu¬ 
pational therapists, physiotherapists and pharmacists; Dip¬ 
lomatic Services and Special Investigation, including .lin¬ 
guists, mathematicians, and specially trained secretaries; 


8-0369-P24-bu- 


24 


Scientific Research, including physicists, chemists, geolo¬ 
gists, mathematicians, agriculturists, and home economists; 
Business and Industry, including engineers, mathematicians, 
statisticians, accountants, and secretaries; Schools and 
Colleges, including teachers, nursery school experts, and 
psychologists. 

Training for Dhysical fitness was also emphasized, as 
follows: "The student should be constantly reminded that 

illness slows down her efficiency, uses up the skill of 
doctors and nurses who are urgently needed for war services, 
and consumes valuable drugs and medical materials. In phys¬ 
ical education departments, student health offices, and food 
services, the college has the facilities for a concentrated 
physical fitness program." 

A Compl icated Task : The USES has catalogued more 

than 1800 war occupations suitable for women, and about 900 
non-war occupations suitable for women. Matching the re¬ 
quirements of thousands of different occupations with the 
qualifications or potentialities of millions of workers is 
obviously a task requiring all the skill and information 
which the Employment Service has amassed in its years of 
experience. For instance, if an employer changes from a 
peace-time industry to the making of some type of munitions, 
he may not even know what skills to look for in his workers. 
On the basis of similar change-overs in other places, the 
U. S. Employment Service can give him detailed job descrip¬ 
tions, training data on all the occupations involved, in¬ 
formation on which occupations are suitable for women, and 
a list of "job fami 1 ies"--jobs that are related to the ones * 
which he has had in his plant and from which he can make a 
transfer of skills. It also may give applicants aptitude 
tests, so that the employer will know what applicants may be 
most quickly and satisfactorily trained. 

Geographical Areas of Opportunity : Women war workers 
are not needed or wanted equally in all parts of the United 
States. For example, a current list of industrial areas in 
which substantial opportunities now exist or are anticipated 
includes the following: 

Springfield, Massachusetts and Bridgeport, Hartford, 

New Britain, and New Haven, Connecticut. 

Buffalo, Elmira, Sidney, and Binghampton, New York. 
Elkton-Perryvi1le and Cumberland, Maryland; Hampton Roads, 
Virginia. Also Washington, D. C. for government workers. 


25 


8-0369-P25-bu- 




Detroit, Michigan; Louisville, Kentucky; Ravenna-Warren 
and Akron, Ohio. 

La Porte-Michigan City, Indiana. 

Childersburg and Huntsville, Alabama, and Aberdeen, 

MississiDpi. 

Little Rock, Arkansas and Tulsa, Oklahoma. 

Texarkana, Texas and Arkansas. 

Ogden, Utah. 

San Diego, California. 

Women who live in these places might find the present 
an opportune time to register at the local employment of¬ 
fices. Of course there are many other localities where 
women workers are wanted. In regions of little demand it 
may take some patient waiting to fit into war production but 
the list of areas of opportunity will inevitably increase. 

How Women Fit Into Typical Industries 

Representative of the way women are helping win the war 
on the production fronts of industry and agriculture are the 
following summaries of large woman-employing industries: 

Aircraft and Parts : In October, 1941, only 2000 women 
were on the production lines in air craft assembly plants. 
After Pearl Harbor, that number quickly doubled. By April 
1942, there were about 17,500 women in the principal plants 
yet in nearly half the plants women were still less than 5 
per cent of the production workers. Since then, they have 
been hired in increasing proportions. By August, approxi¬ 
mately 63,000 women were working in aircraft assembly, 
engine and propeller plants. 

As a conservative estimate, the Women's Bureau states, 
at least one-third of the jobs in the aircraft assembly 
plants could be done by women. 

✓ 

Girls in airplane assembly plants install powerlines, 
electrical systems, pedals, control parts, fittings. They 
rivet surfaces together. They sew the fabrics. They are 
experts at drilling holes. They do subassembly with hand- 
tools. They hand-finish sheet metal parts. They inspect at 
many stages of the work. They do the "spaghetti work" be¬ 
hind the instrument board, assembling the wires that are the 
life-lines of the bombers. They work with ply-wood; help in 
the paint, heat-treat, and anodizing departments. 


8-0369-P26-bu- 


26 



Entrance rate of pay is the same for men as for women 
in almost all the assembly plants, and promotion is on the 
same basis with rates set according to the job. The en¬ 
trance rate is usually 60 cents an hour. After three months, 
it goes up to 75 cents an hour. Top rate is $1.10 to $1.20 
an hour. Highly specialized jobs may rate more pay. 

i 

A great opportunity for women's employment exists in 
the subassembly plants, because the parts and plane sections 
are comparatively small. 

Opportunity for advancement in the airplane industry is 
good. A large proportion of women can be upgraded through 
training to fill positions requiring high degrees of skill 
and responsibi1 ity. 

Ammunition : By far the largest woman-employer among 
the major war industries is ammunition, including artillery 
ammunition and small arms ammunition. In some of these 
plants, many of which have been built in the east, middle 
west, and south, women can do from 70 to 90 percent of the 
jobs, and the estimate is that approximately two-thirds of 
the labor force of the entire industry may be' women. It is 
estimated that 200,000 women will be at work in ammunition 
plants by the end of the year 1942. 

Jobs that women can do in the making of artillery ammu¬ 
nition include: Machine operations on metal parts, and 
their assembly and inspection; machine operations on detona¬ 
tors, fuze primers, boosters, etc., and their assembly in¬ 
spection, loading and packing; body and head machine opera¬ 
tions on propellant primers and their assembly and loading; 
projectile manufacturing in which women work on the lighter 
munition; light machine operations, inspecting and packing 
of cartridge cases; cleaning threads and miscellaneous light 
jobs on projectile loading and the lighter jobs in case load¬ 
ing and assembly; and practically all bag-loading operations. 
Because of their finger dexterity and patience, women are 
particularly adept at working with primers, detonators, and 
fuzes. In checking dimensions and weights women use microm¬ 
eters, gages and scales. An extreme instance of precision 
work is the job of a woman who uses tweezers to pick up very 
small paper disks which she weighs to make certain only one 
disk at a time is being used in loading the percussion ele¬ 
ments for a primer. 

Training — Most of the training is done within the 
plants. A few women instructors and supervisors have been 
sent to Government arsenals for training. 


27 


8-0369-P27-bu- 




Pay -- The principle of equal pay has not been effec¬ 
tive in this industry. Beginning rate for a woman is 45 or 
50 cents an hour. Top pay is usually $1.10 to $1.20 an 
hou r. 


Agriculture : Girls driving trucks and tractors have 

suddenly become a familiar sight to those who travel Ameri¬ 
can highways. Women helped get in the 1942 fruit crops of 
the west coast. Women helped get in midwestern crops. War 
Manpower Commission statisticians estimate that 70% more 
women were working on the farms in the summer of 1942 than 
in the summer of 1940. 

This was because more than a million people had left 
the farms, families pulled to new industrial areas, men 
gone in the draft, girls gone to war jobs. More will go. 
Yet crops must be planted, cared for, and harvested to feed 
our civilians and our armies, and to feed our allies. In 
the face of labor shortage, production must be stepped up. 

The Department of Agriculture has outlined to Congress 
five necessary steps to meet the farm labor shortage: (l) 
Keep on the farms as many experienced managers as possible. 
(2) Recruit more industrial labor in the cities. (3) Use 
the services of more women and young people, training the 
inexperienced. (4) Develop efficient ways of transporting 
migrant farm workers to areas where they are needed. (5) 
Take good farmers off poor land and put them on good land. 

The first women to go in numbers to the field have 
been the farm women, already familiar with farm ways, and 
they will be used more and more next year. But women from 
the cities will also be needed on the farms. Their use 
will depend upon the extent to which training and transpor¬ 
tation can be provided. 

The War Manpower Commission, in joint operation with 
the Department of Agriculture, has taken over the important 
task of getting help to the farms when and where it is 
needed. For farm and food-processing jobs, just as for war 
factory jobs, hiring is done through the United States Em¬ 
ployment Service. In all of the 1500 employment offices, 
farm placement people are available for advice, and in ad¬ 
dition, the USES has opened thousands of volunteer farm 
labor recruiting offices. 

In many towns and cities the government has opened 
night schools to train women and girls to operate farm ma¬ 
chines. A large harvester company has organized night 
classes at dealers headquarters all over the grain belt to 
teach girls how to run tractors. High schools and colleges 


8-0369-P28-bu- 


28 



serve as training centers. On farm as in factory, training 
in the less-skilled type of labor is often on the job, the 
experienced teaching the less experienced. 

Pay * An effort is being made to bring into agriculture 
the same sort of orderly pay-scale arrangements that prevail 
in other industries. Volunteer wage standards should be 
maintained for all farm workers, and this is being done 
through setting up wage boards which hold hearings to decide 
the prevailing rate of pay. The Day scale varies in differ¬ 
ent sections of the country. Under the Federal law, men and 
women engaged in interstate industries must be paid at least 
30 cents an hour. 

Working Conditions : Employment of women on farms 
brings up problems of health, housing, and transportation. 
These are discussed in a booklet which may be obtained from 
the Federal Women’s Bureau, "Guides for Wartime Use of Women 
on Farms." 

Special War Crops : Agriculture, like industry has its 
unusual war jobs. For example, the guayule rubber industry 
of Salinas County, California, was faced with a male labor 
shortage and tried out a hundred women as weeders. It 
worked so well that eventually more than 1700 women were re¬ 
cruited from a 30-mile radius around Salinas to save the 
young guayule crop. 

Communications: !n the telephone, telegraph, radio 
telegraph and cable field, labor has become scarcer as mes¬ 
sages mounted. This has resulted in appeals to the public 
to send only necessary messages and in using of women and 
girls for jobs previously done by men and boys. 

At the end of 1940, over 60 per cent of the 300,000 em¬ 
ployees of telephone companies were women, mostly operators 
ane clerical employees, but some in higher posts 0 There were 
also a few women lawyers and engineers, and around 250 
draftsmen, a few supervisory foremen, and some 30 mainte¬ 
nance and construction workers. In 1941, telephone person¬ 
nel had to be increased by 57,000 and 74,000 more hirings 
were necessary to fill vacancies. Far larger hiring figures 
will be tallied in !942o While the telephone companies were 
still expressing a preference for men in their higher-paid 
posts, they were gladly granting women a place in the tech¬ 
nical telephone field, when Qualified women applied. 


29 


h-0369-P^9-bu- 





Radio has been a young man's industry, and so especial¬ 
ly susceotible to the draft. Of the 5500 qualified radio 
engineers, more than 1000 have already entered army and navy 
and their recruiting continues by nationwide broadcast. As 
a result, women’s colleges, among them Vassar, have opened 
training courses for girl technicians. 

Finding it harder and harder to recruit boys for mes¬ 
senger work, Western Union began recruiting girls, now has 
2,000 of them at work in cities of great message-load. 

Eighty are used in Washington, D. C. to carry messages be¬ 
tween downtown office buildings and Government departments. 
Their use is considered very successful. They have to be 18 
years old. They get $100 a month. They buy their bicycles 
from the company as they work, paying a third down and there¬ 
after $1.25 a week. 

Chemicals and Chemical Products: This industry has a 
marked preference for men, yet inability to get men workers 
has caused the employment of women. It is estimated that 
essential industrial needs for graduate chemists and chemi¬ 
cal engineers during 19*4-2 will be from 2000 to 3000 more 
than the schools can put out or that otherwise will become 
available. Women as well as men are admitted to the chemis¬ 
try courses offered by the Federal Government and described 
earlier in this article under the heading War Training 
Programs. 

Machinery : Women are beginning to enter the various 

branches of machine manufacture. Of 47 occupations in metal 
working industries in which labor shortages are expected to 
develop, 17 are wholly suitable and 22 are partially suita¬ 
ble to women. However, in 7 major New England firms, only 7 
per cent of the working force was women prior to September 
1942, as against 45 per cent women in the British machine 
tool industry. The percentage was even less in midwest in¬ 
dustries. A large increase in women hirings was expected in 
the last months of this year to replace men called up by 
Selective Service. 

Rubber Goods : Women constitute more than a fourth of 
the industry’s labor force. Several large companies each 
employ more than 1000 women, mostly on the production line. 

In Akron, Ohio, women will constitute 70 per cent of the 
future hirings. They are employed in making life rafts, 
landing boats, flotation bags for planes forced down at sea, 
rubber vests, self-sealing gas tanks, and parts for gas 
masks. 


S-0369-P30-bu- 


30 





Scientific, Optical and Surgical Instrumsnts : Women 
are,adept as instrument makers because of the precision re¬ 
quired. The proportion of women in the plants which make 
the instruments which direct weapons runs as high as 50 per 
cent. Women have also been taken on extensively for making 
dental, surgical, and optical instruments. Special machin¬ 
ing of dental burs and breaches in about 150 styles- is done 
almost exclusively by women. They also test and inspect the 
sensitive pieces that go into gyroscopic instruments. 

Shipbui1d inq : Women are being used more and more in 
the ship yards, mostly as shipfitters helpers, subassembly 
welders, and painters. At one Brooklyn Navy Yard they are 
now being used as chauffeurs, welders, burners, and small 
machine operators. They are also sewing in the sail lofts, 
doing repair jobs, and of course serving as clerical help. 

T ransportat ion : In 1940, the railroads employed 47,000 
women, mostly secretaries, stenographers, typists, office 
machine operators, and switchboard operators. With in¬ 
creased transportation loads travelling over all the rail¬ 
roads of the country, their numbers have materially in¬ 
creased. So have the numbers of women in the better paid 
positions — passenger traffic representatives, freight 
traffic representatives, train stewardesses, city ticket 
agents, station agents, timekeepers, accountants, cashiers, 
bookkeepers, car tracers, rate clerks. In 1940, 400 rail¬ 
road women got salaries of more than $2400; 2300 got sala¬ 
ries of more than $2000. Now women are beginning to be em¬ 
ployed in the more unusual railroad jobs, replacing men from 
the day-laborer level on up to ticket agents in sizeable 
cities. In a few cases they are crossing flagmen and signal 
tower operators. They load and arrange materials in rail¬ 
road storehouses, keep records, load and unload supplies. 

In roundhouses, they work as engine wipers, and pick up the 
scrap iron and wood left by repairers. One of the eastern 
railways has started training women college graduates as 
ticket agents and administrators in the traffic department. 
The Women's Bureau of the Department of Labor has served as 
consultant on standards for working conditions for women 
taking rai1 road jobs. 

Air transport offers the modern miss a modern method of 
making an interesting life and livelihood. Twenty per cent 
of the‘employees in air transport are women D Thirty per cent 
will be women by the end of the year. Their stewardesses no 
longer have to be trained nurses, but still must have had 
one year of college,, Other air transport jobs: making pres- 


31 


8-0369-P31-bu- 






sure charts, housekeeping both aircraft and station, secre¬ 
tarial and clerical work, giving information to the public. 

Motor transport - driving commercial buses and trucks - 
employs very few women, could employ more. North Carolina 
uses gir1s<of 16 to 18 to drive school buses, and plans to 
spread the system. Of 800 girls thus employed, none has had 
a serious accident to date. Figures received by the Motor 
Vehicle Department of the State show that girl-driven school 
buses require 40 per cent less money for repairs, consume 20 
per cent less fuel. 

Civilian Goods : Our armed forces are large, but they 
are still small in number as compared to the numbers of ci¬ 
vilians. Even though the armed forces require three times 
as much food and clothing when in this country, and ten 
times as much on foreign duty as do civilians, even though 
the metal industries are largely converted to war production, 
it still requires more workers and more plant facilities to 
feed and clothe civilians than to care for the armed forces. 
This work must go on. When men are called into service from 
these industries, women must fill in the production gaps. 

In the making of men*s suits and coats, women consti¬ 
tute 60 per cent of the workers and that percentage will go 
up. In the women’s garment trades, women already constitute 
between 80 and 90 per cent of the workers. In the making of 
underwear and the knitting of stockings and socks, women are 
doing well over half the jobs. The percentage of women in 
the shoe industry has risen from 40 to 50 per cent and will 
go higher. Necktie and cap making come very close to being 
all-woman industries. In manufacturing other than munitions, 
the working forces have in general been about half men and 
half women since 1940. From now on, the weight will in¬ 
creasingly fall on the women’s side of the balances. 

The needle work trades however, have presented a spe¬ 
cial problem in that the change from peace to war industries 
has thrown many skilled women out of jobs, particularly in 
New York City. 


8-0369-P32-bu- 


32 



IN BUSINESS AND THE PROFESSIONS 


As the Army and Navy inducts into military life more 
and more doctors, dentists, nurses, teachers, bank tellers, 
newspaper reporters, and other business and orofessional 
people, some one has to take their places in civilian life*, 
War also causes the creation of new professional jobs such 
as the specialist who must set up new day care programs for 
young children of women working in war factories and the 
paid personnel with service organizations such as the 
American Red Cross and USO. 

Each community and section of the country can compile 
its own list of professional opportunities opening to women 
through the exigencies of war, enabling them to do a trained 
service for community and country, and thus free another 
person for active warfare or war production*, For the coun¬ 
try as a whole, the institute of Womens Professional Rela¬ 
tions, Connecticut College for Women, New London, has con¬ 
ducted research, repeatedly referred to in these pages. 

A few examples of war jobs for women in business and 
professional fields follow: 

Bankinq: About 65,000 women are now employed in banks, 
about twenty-five per cent of the total personnel. They are 
there because they proved their value to the financial world 
during the last war D Prediction is that if this war should 
continue another two years, their numbers will be doubled. 

A general high school education is required. Girls start in 
the junior clerical classification and work up under a 
system of promotion in the ranks made possible by special 
training courses. The American Institute of Banking offers 
a total of 18 courses in law, economics, accounting, in¬ 
vestments, trusts, credit, and other financial subjects*. 

Day Care : The nursery school- specialist and child 
psychologist will soon find her special training in great 
demand as communities organize for the day care of the 
children of women who are working in war plants*, 

With some stimulation from the government, particularly 
through the WPA nursery school program, the number of nurs¬ 
ery schools in this country has more than trebled since 
1936. But their total is still so small as to be the merest 
sampling of what has to be done to make possible the actual 
physical care of children whose mothers are doing war work 
and to start young children of this country on the education 


33 


8-036ft-PJ;* bu- 




they will have to have as a new generation faced with the 
task of remaking a war-shattered worldc Already requests 
are coming to this Government from the other American re- 
oublics for trained nursery school people., Some 200 col¬ 
leges and universities of this country have reported that 
they maintain nursery school or kindergarten laboratories, 
some as part of academic courses and some in connection with 
colleges of Home Economics. High schools also, as part of 
Victory Corps activities, are setting uc nurseries to serve 
the double purpose of caring for children of women in war 
plants and to give young girls taking home economics practi¬ 
cal laboratory experience in the care of children,, Some 
high schools already were maintaining nursery schools as 
laboratories for young girls taking courses in family life 
education or preparing for vocational work as nursery as¬ 
sistants,, After-school care for older children brings in 
another large field. While the national day care program is 
now only in its beginnings, it seems certain to offer broad 
opportunities for trained supervisors, psychologists, nutri¬ 
tionists, women trained in music, art, construction, garden¬ 
ing, dramatics, nature lore, and physical education. 

Women who are qualified for this work and are seeking a 
job in this field should apply to their state or local De¬ 
partment of Education or to their State or Local Work Pro¬ 
jects Administration office since these agencies will have 
charge of personnel of nursery schools established with 
federal funds. Cooperative community nursery schools are 
often started by individual enterprise, women cooling to 
supply the salaries of trained supervisors for their 
child ren„ 

Education : Shortages are apparent in teaching fields 

from which men have been drawn by war services. They also 
appear where women have taken better paying jobs in defense 
industries and government service. 

Probably the most acute shortage is in small rural 
schools. In more than a fourth of the States, teachers’ 
salaries are under $1000 a year, as against $1260 to $1440 
as starting salaries for clerical and typing jobs in govern¬ 
ment. The draining off of teachers and potential teachers 
into war jobs has resulted in the issuing of emergency per¬ 
mits to teach in approximately three-fifths of the States. 
Since the rural school, which is the very bed-rock of our 
free educational system, employs about half of our teachers 
girls qualified as teachers by high school education 


8-0369-P34-bu- 


34 



and additional teacher training could engage in no more 
patriotic war service than the peacetime job called teaching 
school. 


In village and city elementary school and high schools 
the greatest shortages in order of the acuteness of the need 
are listed in a federal survey as follows: (l) Teachers of 
agriculture. (2) Teachers of industrial arts, and of trade 
and industrial subjects. (3) Teachers of general science, 
physics, and chemistry. Half the States have reoorted 
shortages in these subjects and no State has reported a sur¬ 
plus. (4) Teachers of physical education. Some men teach¬ 
ing these subjects who have been called into the armed 
services have reported that women could take their places 
in emergency. (5) Public school nurses and teachers of 
health subjects. If the war continues long, tragic condi¬ 
tions are unavoidable unless there is planning and prepara¬ 
tion to prevent nurse shortages and to encourage fitness 
programs. (6) Mathematics teachers. Women well versed in 
mathematics are wanted as teachers, especially in the 
smaller places. (7) Teachers of business and commercial 
courses. Here the shortage is likely to increase because 
of the numbers of business-trained women going into govern¬ 
ment and war industries. (8) Home Economics teachers. 

This is a shortage that tends to grow in spite of the fact 
that married women whose husbands have been called into 
service are returning to their former vocations in the home 
economics field. The war emphasis on nutrition has given 
great impetus to teaching of home economics. 

In spite of all these shortages, there are surpluses 
of teachers in some of the big cities, and in a few sub¬ 
jects. In twelve States, surpluses have been reoorted in 
teachers of history and social studies. Seven States have 
reported a surplus of English teachers and none has re¬ 
ported a shortage. Four States have surpluses of foreign 
language teachers. In New York and some other large East¬ 
ern cities, there are surpluses in almost every field. 

To apply for teaching jobs ---- 

In these 15 States, address the State Department of 
Education Placement Service: Alabama, Delaware, Florida, 
Idaho, Maryland, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Missis¬ 
sippi, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Texas, Ver¬ 
mont, Wyoming. 

In the following 15 States, call on the free placement 
service provided for Public school teachers by the U. S. 

35 


8-0369-P35-bu- 


Employment Service's State office: Arkansas, Colorado, 
Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Mis¬ 
souri, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah, Wiscon- 
s i n. 

In these 7 States, the State Education Association oro- 
vides a fre'e placement service: California, Michigan, Mon¬ 
tana, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oregon, South Carolina. 

Many teachers still get jobs by individual application, 
dealing directly with Boards of Education. There are also 
more than eighty private teachers' agencies in this country. 
The usual charge is five per cent of the first year's salary 
in.the position obtained through them. 

Medicine: The shortage of civilian physicians should 

stimulate more women to enter and to return to the medical 
profession. However, at least one state medical school has 
closed its doors to women "for the duration." In 19M-0, there 
were 7470 women physicians in the United States and all but 
6 of the 77 medical schools admitted women. The training is 
long and arduous, four years medical school and two years 
internship in addition to four years college. Internships, 
residences, and fellowshiDS for women in the medical field 
have tripled in recent years. Women have made an especially 
strong showing in the field of mental hygiene and psychi¬ 
atry. Of women graduated as Physicians from accredited 
medical schools, only one in three continues a life career 
in active practice. Women physicians who have married and 
retired from practice should if possible, take refresher 
courses in order to be able to serve their country and their 
communities in the war emergency. 

Nursing: Because of the dire need of this nation for 

nurses, in civilian life as well as in army, navy, and pub¬ 
lic health services, Congress has appropriated $3,500,000 
to stimulate nursing education. Present facilities to train 
nurses will be enlarged, new training centers will be estab¬ 
lished in connection with colleges and universities in stra¬ 
tegic areas throughout the country. Every girl who is 
Qualified to become a nurse is urged to enter training. 

About 20,000 additional students are needed for the January 
and February 1943 classes to complete the 55,000 quota 
needed before July I, 1943. There is every possibility that 
65,000 students will be needed for the school year 1942-43. 

In addition to the new crop of nurses which must be 
coming on, retired nurses should return to duty in the 


R-0369-P36-bu- 


36 




hospitals of their communities. It is estimated that ap¬ 
proximately 100,000 nurses have left nursing for other work 
or for marriage, and are lost to the nursing registrieso 
Refresher courses are offered to facilitate their return to 
active duty. 

Enough women must go into nursing NOW to real ace the 
nurses called into war service, to help shoulder the added 
burdens of the lessened numbers of doctors, to safeguard 
the health of workers in the war factories, to help teach 
the people better care of their health so as to relieve the 
overload.on hospitals and doctors, to check up on children 
in the schools and prevent the spread of diseases which 
break out under wartime conditions, to educate the public 
in mental health so as to lessen the psychological impacts 
of war. 

Special advantages : Nursing has become a field which 
offers many interesting vocations aside from bedside care 
of the sick. The trained nurse of today has a profession 
which can carry her forward into more and more interesting 
fields of service. She can go anywhere and find oppor¬ 
tunities. She can marry and raise a family with the serene 
knowledge that she has a skill which could be brushed up 
and put to work at earning a living at any time anything 
happened to her husband. She knows she is helping humanity 
when its need is greatest. In the postwar reconstruction 
period, nurses will also have great opportunity for foreign 
service in all parts of the world. 

Pay : The institutional nursing, nursing education, and 

public health nursing fields offer salaries from $2500 to 
$6000 yearly and even higher. 

For further facts about nursing, write Miss Florence 
Seder, National Nursing Council for War Service, 1790 Broad¬ 
way, New York City. 

Pharmacy : This is another of the many fields necessary 

to the safeguarding of civilian life in which women may be 
used to replace men called by their country. Opportunities 
are opening in the great pharmaceutical laboratories as well 
as in the retail drug field 0 In order to be able to take an 
examination as a registered pharmacist, it is necessary to 
be a high school graduate, to be a graduate of an approved 
school of pharmacy, and to have had one year of practical 
experience 0 Salaries are around $30 and $MO a week. Posi¬ 
tions may often be obtained through the school of pharmacy 


37 


8-0369-p37-bu- 




from which the woman is graduated. 


Journaiism: In this war, as in the last one, more 
women are working in newspapers and general writing fields 
as a result of men going out into fighting fields. One 
Tennessee daily has an all-women staff. A newspaper in a 
midwestern city has an all-girl cooy desk. Girls instead of 
boys are being used to run copy 0 The press associations are 
hiring more women reporters. But there is no real labor 
shortage, and specialized training is required for posi¬ 
tions, which still are comparatively scarce D Positions are 
obtained by individual application. 

War Work Organizations : In the last war the expression 
that a young woman of professional training had gone into 
war usually brought visions of Salvation Army lasses, Red 
Cross canteen workers, and uniformed girls on duty in the 
recreation rooms of the "Y". These same organizations under 
somewhat different plans and conditions, give career-oppor¬ 
tunities to women today. 

American Red Cross: In this war, the American Red 
Cross is the only organization permitted to send its members 
to serve with the troops in foreign countries. Wherever our 
fighting forces go into foreign lands, the Red Cross Mili¬ 
tary and Navy Welfare Service goes along to organize recrea¬ 
tion programs in clubs and hostels and to make life pleasant 
for the men in Army and Navy hospitals. In this country, 
this Service functions only in the hospitals of the Military 
Camps and Naval Baseso Women who enter this work must be 
between the ages of 25 and 40, must not have husbands in the 
armed services at the time they take the job, but are not 
dismissed if their husbands later enter military duty. A 
high degree of training and experience is requiredo Over¬ 
seas positions fall into three categories: (l) Recreational 
work, requiring trained skill in music, dramatics, the arts, 
outdoor sports, and organization experienceo (2) Medical 
social workers in the hospital recreation program, requiring 
both recreational skills and scientific training in occupa¬ 
tional therapy. (3) Secretarial help. Service in this 
country includes only the last two categorieso Salaries 
range from about $100 to $150 a month for secretaries on 
overseas duty and $135 up to $225 for social and recreation 
work personnel. Apply to Personnel Director, American Red 
Cross, Washington, Do C. 

United Service Organizations : The USO comprises six o 
the voluntary organizations remembered for gallant service 


8-0369-P3R-bu 


3b 






records in the last world war--Salvat ion Army, Y. M. C. A., 

Y. M. C. A., National Catholic Community Service, Jewish Wel¬ 
fare Board, and National Travelers Aid Association. As well 
as offering recreation to soldiers in transit and on 1eave 
throughout this country, the USO has an Overseas Division 
which sets ud recreation centers in such outlying terri¬ 
tories as Alaska and Hawaii at the invitation of Army and 
Navy. Each of the six agencies hires and trains its own 
workers. The whole nation knows the club directors and the 
assistant club directors of the USO who organize the enter¬ 
tainment of servicemen and the athletics of factory girls, 
and give advice on personal problems. Applicants must be 
at least 23 years of age, be a U. S. citizen, have social 
service and recreation training and experience, and have 
excellent physical health and stamina. Apply to the per¬ 
sonnel director of the individual agencies through National 
Headquarters of USO, 1630 Empire State Building, New York 
City. 


39 


8-0369-P39-nobu- 





















































































- 


1*0 



8-0369-P40-blank 













AS VOLUNTEERS 


Modern warfare has created anew necessity for community 
protection. Civilian population as well as fighting forces 
are targets for enemy bombing. Cities must think in terms 
of how fast an airplane can fly over the top of the world as 
well as about how long it takes ships to cross the ocean. 

The interior of Arsenal American is filled with munitions 
and materials which must be guarded from sabotage. The 
fire-watchers’ tower in the forest fastness has to have its 
counterpart in battalions of trained eyes in the towns. 

Women who don’t go off to war must be increasingly the very 
backbone of this work. 

There are in this country about 400 local areas, in¬ 
volving more than 1000 communities which might be termed 
critical defense areas because of the concentration of mili¬ 
tary personnel or industrial war workers. In most of these 
places, population has risen rapidly, outrunning community 
facilities such as schools, recreation centers, and health 
clinics. Women have swung wholeheartedly into furnishing 
community services to these areas and must continue to do so 
as the need is still great. 

The things which happen to human beings in war have 
been more terrible under the onslaught of the Axis than ever 
before in history. Th*e victims of Germany and Japan must be 
helped. The American people have to be schooled in a new 
stamina to conquer a barbarism which by all standards of 
ordinary common sense is inconceivable. 

'The field of working with the problems of human beings ' 
has been pioneered by women, and in that field they are pre¬ 
eminent. Where their good works were once done in a casual 
and individualistic fashion, a new spirit of professional 
pride in the job has sprung up. The woman volunteer of to¬ 
day, whether available for full time or part time war work, 
takes training', keeps her work up to a high standard of 
quality and dependability. Volunteer service is one field 
-in which women actively may help to hold some of the social 
gains made in the past decade. 

Office of Civilian Defense: The 0CD divides into two 
main branches, The United States Citizens Defense Corps and 
the United States Citizens Service Corps. Each must have 
its dependable staff corps capable of putting in long hours 
in an emergency. 


41 


'S-0.16D-P4 I-bu- 



Citizens Defense Corps : In this corps, which is organ¬ 
ized to minimize the effect of enemy action on life and 
property, women volunteers now work as: drivers, messengers, 
air raid wardens, in emergency food and housing services, in 
medical services as physicians and trained nurses and nurse's 
aides. As the draft accelerates it seems more than likely 
that women will have to replace men volunteers. They will 
hold a bigger share of the air raid warden posts and more of 
them will enter such services as fire watchers, auxiliary 
firemen, and auxiliary police services. From twenty to 
thirty-eight hours class training and drill are required to 
earn the OCD insignia and operate in these fields. 

By all odds the most needed of these services, so far 
as women are concerned, is that given by the Nurses Aide 
Unit. Here Volunteer Nurse T s Aides, trained by the American 
Red Cross, assist registered nurses so that they may serve a 
greater number of patients with their specialized and scien¬ 
tific skills. The nurse* sa ides take on such important and 
necessary tasks as cleaning and sterilizing equipment and 
feeding helpless patients, as well as carrying trays and 
other routine sick room tasks’. In time of .emergency, as 
regular members of an Emergency Medical Service Field Unit 
Team, they assist in the treatment of civilians on the scene 
of emergency action, or in Casualty Stations. Aides must be 
between the ages of 18 and 50, and must complete 80 hours 
special Red Cross training, which includes 45 hours of super¬ 
vised hospital work. They are also pledged to complete, 
within one year of becoming a member, 20 hours of first aid 
and to give 150 hours volunteer work as a Nurse's Aide. 

Citizens Service Corps : War services which are carried 
on by unpaid civilians under this corps fall into the fol¬ 
lowing general classifications: Salvage, War Stamps and War 
Bond Sales, Family Security Services, Child Care Services, 
Health and Hospital Services, Nutrition Services,. Consumer 
Programs, Housing Programs, Recreation and Youth Group Serv¬ 
ices, School and Education Programs, Library Services, 
Infowation Services, service as Neighborhood or Block 
Leaders, and Other Wartime Services. Women are active in 
al1 of them. 

Candidates for this Corps qualify for membership by 
(l) completing a prescribed training course; (2) completing 
a prescribed apprenticeship; (3) completing 50 hours of vol¬ 
unteer work for which no specific training course is 
requiredo 


8-03 69-P4 2 


42 




Most of these services are explained by their titles 
which bring mental pictures of women collecting the scrap, 
selling war stamps and bonds, assisting in day care programs 
for children of working mothers, advising on food buying and 
helping in group feeding projects, leading consumer discus¬ 
sions and Dromoting clothing clinics, giving services to 
soldiers on leave, teaching Americanization classes,. 


l pariprl ? e ’ however, are the Neighborhood or Block 

a nat,,rli Th ° CD ,' S ur9 ' n9 the ado P ti ° n of the Block System, 
a natural avenue for action by women, by every town and city 

in the country, and the Extension Service of the Department 
of Agriculture is fostering its use in rural areas,, Under 
•’ • }^ e c °mmun i ty is organized for action in the 
tield of civilian war services — salvage, car-sharing, 
nutrition, stamp and bond buying, growing victory gardens, 
sharing the meat — just as it is organized for action in 
an air raid. Block leaders are chosen in each block or 
neighborhood. They report to a sector block leader who in 
turn reports to a zone leader,. On the block leader rests 
the responsibility for attending such meetings and r eading 
such materials as are necessary for her to give a sympathetic 
explanation of the program to her neighbors and swing them 
into action. 


To volunteer for such services, go to your local Civil¬ 
ian Defense Volunteer Office or your local Defense Council. 


American Red Cross : The Red Cross Volunteer Special 
Services, familiar in this war as in the last, have a total 
enrollment of nearly 3,000,000 women, who perform a variety 
of volunteer duties in the following corps: Production, 
Canteen, Motor, Volunteer Nurse’s Aide, Hospital and Recrea¬ 
tion (Gray Ladies) Home Service, and Staff Assistance. 

The largest service is the Production Corps, which in 
the year ending June 30, 1942, turned out more than 
71,000,000 surgical dressings and 6,500,000 garments includ¬ 
ing thousands of knitted articles,. 


The more than 9000 Gray Ladies of the Hospital and 
Recreation Corps perform many services for patients in mili¬ 
tary and civilian hospitals. 

The Canteen Corps with 25,362 members, specializes in 
emergency feeding. A total of 100,000 canteen aides has 
been trained to help this Corps in emergencies. 

The Motor Corps, active in about 850 Red Cross chap¬ 
ters, has a personnel of approximately I2,000o Its members 
are trained in first aid, map reading, and motor mechanics. 
They drive on assignments from the Red Cross chapter, and 
occasionallv give special services to the armed forces. 


43 


£ - 03 6 ** -P4 3 _fo 



The Volunteer Nurse’s Aide Corps has grown from 364 
nurse’s aides in 19 chapters on December 7 to approximately 
30,000 aides in 678 chapters. A call has been issued for 
100,000 nurse’s aides., 

To offer your services in any of these fields, apply to 
your local Red Cross chapter. 

USQ: Volunteers by the hundreds help the US0 give 
service to soldiers and sailors on leave or in transit and 
to workers in the war plants. These volunteers dance with 
the boys, give them competition at games, take them sight¬ 
seeing, feed them sandwiches and coffee. They organize 
athletic classes and parties for women war workers. They 
also give welfare services to families. For volunteer work 
with the US0, apply to your local US0 headquarters. 

Civic Clubs : War time work to keep alive the many 
worthy projects of the many civic clubs of this country, and 
to carry along war responsibilities as well, is a worthy 
field for the women who comprise these clubs and work as 
volunteers,, From the tens of thousands of possible illus¬ 
trations which might be cited in this field, the following 
is chosen for the reason that it applies to one phase of the 
topic under discussion. 

In cooperation with the National Roster for Scientific 
and Specialized Personnel, experimental War Job Information 
Centers were set up by the local branches of the American 
Association of University Women in the State of Connecticut, 
in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. 

These centers, manned by women who work as volunteers, 
help women find paying war jobs of the type which require 
specialized training and experience. They work closely with 
the USES, the Civil Service Commission, the personnel direc¬ 
tors and officials of industry. They also keep current in¬ 
formation on training facilities and refresher programs. 
Personal contacts with officials of government and industry 
have resulted in cordial relationships which make it possi¬ 
ble to direct applicants to specific personnel departments, 
thereby saving much time and effort. Since some employers 
send directly to large colleges and universities for spe¬ 
cially trained personnel, one of the purposes is to help 
women from smaller colleges. These experimental centers 
have proven so useful that the Association now is moving to 
make War Jobs Information Centers a national project, to be 
taken up by its branches wherever there is need of the 
service and there is the volunteer personnel to carry it on. 


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The American Women*s Voluntary Services : Conducts two 
free courses in communications which may lead to positions 
with the Army, Navy or Civil Service; trains volunteers and 
offers opportunities for them to serve in motor corns, land 
armies, and various civilian protection fields. Recruiting 
is done by the local AWVS group. 

Aid to the United Nations ; To the more fortunate 
people of this nation victims of the Axis must turn for 
relief. Among the many organizations in this fie 1 d are the 
British War Relief Society, Bundles for Britain, United 
China Relief, Greek War Relief, and Russian Reliefo This 
work is largely carried forward by volunteers. 

It y s a Woman 1 s War Now; No discussion of the work of 
the woman volunteer would be complete without emphasizing 
the fact that we are in this war all the way, it’s a woman’s 
war right now, and women should be thinking in terms of 
going into full-time work and carrying along many of their 
volunteer activities as sidelines., It has been done in 
England. It can be done here by careful planning and hard 
work. 


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